Salute to Jill Hutchinson A Pioneer in Coaching Women’s Basketball

“You don’t have to be a victim of your environment. You learn that through sports, you learn that through teamwork. You decide who you want to be and then you go pursue that. “ I learned this key lesson from my college coach, Jill Hutchinson, a legend in women’s basketball. With that mindset, it is no surprise Jill influenced the lives of so many young women in her 28-year tenure as ISU.

She refused to be a victim of gender.

Historically in America, women and sports were incompatible. While at University of New Mexico (1963-1967), Hutchinson was reprimanded for competing in a national tournament in Gallup, NM as part of an AAU state championship team. When a professor, who was then president of the Division of Girls and Women’s Sport (DGWS), announced that women were not suited for team sport, Jill challenged her comment in class.

“She ripped me from one end to the other,” Hutchinson recounted. “I walked out of class in tears.  I remember telling some kids in class that I was going to make sure girls have an opportunity to play.”

Before the time women were recruited, I chose Illinois State University on a gut feeling.  Coach Jill Hutchinson won me over with her enthusiasm for life and the game.

Coach Hutchinson with Coach McKinzie

Coach Hutchinson with Coach McKinzie

Not only were female athletes new, but women coaches were an anomaly.

While Hutchinson racked up championships in her 28-year tenure at Illinois State, she also succeeded at the international level leading the US to a gold at the 1983 World University Games and a silver medal at the 1978 Pan American Games. On the national level, she is known for helping the women’s game grow from obscurity to its current level of popularity.

In spite of the obstacles she confronted, Hutchinson was never bitter. When inducted to the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame Knoxville Tennessee, Jill said, “I am very fortunate to have lived in the time I have. The progress from the time when we could only play three players on each side of the court to where we are today has been a great experience.”

She was a rookie coach, learning the ropes as she went along, yet she never feared asking questions or standing up for what was right. Jill gained ground with class and kindness at time when women met roadblocks. When women athletics moved from McCormack gym to Horton, they were unwelcome. “I brought brownies to the workers and won them over.”

“Her legacy is etched in stone in national basketball archives with 460 wins and an impeccable graduation rate at Illinois State,” said former ISU Athletics Director Rick Greenspan.

She coached numerous professional players and two Olympians, Charlotte Lewis and Cathy Boswell, but what makes her proudest is the fact that every senior athlete she coached earned a degree, even if she came back years later to attain it.

“If you’re willing to win at all costs, if you don’t emphasize the values in sport and the values in learning then I think you, as a coach, sell out to the big entertainment business. I still think if you’re going to be coaching at a collegiate institution you have an obligation to educate your student athletes.”

She had just as great impact off the court as on it due to her leadership on the rules committee. She was the co-founder and first Women’s Basketball Coaches Association President, an honor she held 4 times.

“I have been extremely fortunate in my career,” said Hutchinson.  “I never had to go to work. I got to go to the gym.”

Yet work she did. As a graduate student at ISU, her research shattered the myth that full court 5on 5 basketball would be fatal for women.  She hooked electrodes to basketball players with no ill effects proving a woman’s heart wouldn’t explode by running a fastbreak. This led to a change in rules instead of six-player game to the full court five-player game.

As first generation Title IX athletes, competitive sports for girls was so new that we came into university with raw talent, true grit and a love of the game. We were in awe of Coach Hutchinson. For the first time, we had a female role model. Everyone who played for her wanted to do right by her. Most of us remained in contact with her long after graduation.

When my former Olympian teammate, Charlotte Lewis, died of a heart attack in her early 50s, Jill spoke at her funeral.

Another, incident shows the depth of Jill’s caring. I left the States in 1980 to play basketball in Europe. Three decades later, my Franco-American daughter raised abroad returned to the States to combine sport and academics as part of the DIII program that Hutchinson recommended. My daughter, Nathalie, played for Shirley Egner, another highly acclaimed coach at UW-Stevens Point. Hutchinson attended their match-up at Illinois Wesleyan and stayed afterward to meet Nathalie. Then Jill passed on to my daughter the poem that I had written her, during my senior year at ISU, about a coach’s role shaping athletes into adults.

Coach Hutchinson, coach Egner & Nat

Coach Hutchinson, coach Egner & Nat

Hutchinson was ahead of her time. Long before sports psychology existed, she invited a psychiatrist to teach us progressive, relaxation technique before a big game.

In the day before assistants, Hutchinson was a one-woman show. She thought nothing of driving her team cross country in campus station wagons. She tracked down gyms without GPS, and followed weather reports and speed trap warnings from truckers on CB radios. She fielded winning teams on shoe-string budgets, fighting for practice space, athletic equipment and opportunities to compete. She planned practices, organized travel, scouted opponents, and fought on national committees for women’s rights. She mimeographed handwritten scouting reports detailing game strategy and opponent players’ strengths and weaknesses. Every game she scrawled individual notes to each player. Hutch had an uncanny ability to motivate players and that motivation never left us.

Her legacy lives on in the hundreds of players whose lives she influenced and in their daughters, who never doubted their right to succeed in any arena!

Title IX Opens Doors from Hoop Dreams to MDs!

Back in the 1960s, tall, smart and athletic, I slouched through school with 3 strikes against me, ridiculed for my passion to play “boy’s ball games.” Then in 1972 Title IX, a controversial bill, passed as a part of the Civil Rights Amendment and opened doors that had slammed closed in my face.

For the first time ever, laws mandated equal opportunity on America’s playing fields. Though early on we weren’t welcomed there, we kept fighting. As a first generation Title IXer, I, unknowingly, became a pioneer in women’s basketball. I received the first athletic scholarship to Illinois State. No one recruited back then, I was lucky to be at the right place at right time.

Illinois State University - 1978

Illinois State University – 1978

“The majority of our staff opposed scholarships. It was a real struggle deciding if we were going to do it or not. In the end, we awarded Illinois State’s first basketball scholarship in 1978 to Pat McKinzie.”

– Jill Hutchinson,
Illinois State Coach1st President and Co-founder
Women’s Basketball Coaches Association
 

I played with an All Star cast of Illinois’ finest ball players who made me look good. The late Cyndi Ellis, late Charlotte Lewis, 1976 silver Olympic medalist, Vonnie Tomich, All Pro WBL, Cyndi Slayton and others like Annette Rutt (1967) who came before me paving the way including coach Jill Hutchinson.

On selection teams, try out camps, and in my brief stint in the short-lived, premier Women’s Pro League, WBL, I met other unsung heroes blazing trails in their home states. We had no idea we were making history; we just wanted a chance to dance on the hardwood.

Now 40 years later, I salute old rivals and teammates who helped pave the way for generations of young girls across the continent. These are but a few of the scholarship recipients (1975-79) that I was able to track down through the wonderful wacky worldwide web.

A teammate from the pros, Cathy Shoemaker, first scholarship recipient at University North Carolina and WBL Dallas Diamonds (1979-81) All Star, is now a physical therapist in South Carolina. She helped her team to advance to the AIAW regionals as a three-time AIAW All-State.

One of my college archrivals, who befriended me at Athletes in Action training camp in Colorado, was Betty Booker, the first athletic scholarship recipient at Memphis State University. She went onto become an award winning high school coach and later an assistant principal at Whitehaven High School in Tennessee.

Out west, one of the first scholarship recipients at the University Wyoming was another point guard, Cindy Bower, my teammate with the Washington D.C. Metros. Her young coach, Margie McDonald, also a groundbreaker, was a scholarship recipient at Wayland Baptist, Texas. Cindy went onto become a highly respected businesswoman, founder and CEO of Calibre Management Inc.

One of the biggest name player at that time period, Ann Meyers Drysdale was the first 4-year athletic scholarship at UCLA, 4-time All-American, the only woman to sign a contract with the NBA, Indiana Pacers, and first woman drafted in the first women’s professional league New Jersey Gems in1979. She became a successful sportscaster.

During the 1970s, my “full ride” felt like drawing the winning lottery ticket and helped my parents afford to put four children five years apart through college on teachers’ salaries. In turn, I gave back to the game, coaching high school players from around the globe at international schools in Europe, including one 6’2″ blue-eyed, dark-haired Franco American named Nathalie.

UWSP's Nathalie Lechault - 2007

UWSP’s Nathalie Lechault – 2007

Years later, my daughter, returned to the States to combine academics and education. She played in a DIII Final Four at UW-Stevens Point under the tutelage of another pioneer, my former rival at UW-Lacrosse, Shirley Egner, the most decorated coach in the competitive Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.

Nathalie became the first MD in the family on either side of the Atlantic. Raise the roof for the young women of the 21st century, who never doubted their right to rise to the top.

Tall, smart, athletic…today you look up to shake hands with Dr. Lechault.

In your face, world! Who’s laughing now?

Happy Father’s Day – From Papa Mac to President Obama Empowering Daughters

When I saw the espnW interview with President Obama coaching his 10-year-old daughter, Sasha’s basketball team, I cried; it reminded me so much of my dad and me. However, forty years ago,  dads teaching daughters jump shots were anomolies. Most fathers discouraged daughters from playing ball games because society deemed it unladylike.

Like my dad and I, first the President cheered on Sasha from the sidelines, then  he offered  pointers  to the team at the White House on Sundays and, finally, he coached the team from the bench, shouting aphorisms my father once pronounced, « Work the ball inside. Don’t take those crazy long shots. »

“Girls just take it for granted,” President Obama said,  “and maybe that is a good thing that girls grow up knowing they have equal rights on the court.”

But it is hard to appreciate what you got.

Four decades ago,  when  my dad hollered,” Quit marching down court like a battle line. Spread the wings.  Get ahead of the ball,” my team learned how to fly on the fastbreak.

Slowly, times changed. In 1977, five years after Title IX’s passage, my dad co-coached my younger sister, Karen’s team to a first ever high school state championship at my alma mater Illinois State University.

1st girls Illinois State Champions

1st girls Illinois State Champions

My dad shaped values in the athletes he nurtured during his 33-year career at Sterling High School. His endearing relationship with his championship girls’ team earned him the affectionate title of Papa Mac. In his four years of coaching girls’ basketball, my dad’s teams racked up, 1 State championship, a 3rd place and an Elite Eight appearance. Then he retired, but not before girls basketball put Sterling on the map. Championship teams brought honor to the town and high school, but what made Papa Mac proudest was seeing how his athletic girls grew up to offer contributions to society as principals, teachers, social workers and leading members of their communities.

When I was 10 years old, I dreaded my 11th birthday because I thought I would have to exchange my high tops for heels, forfeit my dreams and stop shooting jump shots.  Papa Mac helped open the door of athletic opportunity for me and my younger sisters.

“Play hard, shoot straight, aim high!” he encouraged.

Four decades later, our 44th head of the nation echoed those words. President Obama deemed it important enough to take time out from running world affairs to coach his daughter’s team. That example speaks volumes about how far we have come.

“I am a huge believer that sports ends up being good for kids, and especially good for girls. It gives them confidence, it gives them a sense of what it means to compete. Studies show that girls who are involved in athletics often do better in school; they are more confident in terms of dealing with boys. And, so, for those of us who grew up just as Title IX was taking off, to see the development of women’s role models in sports, and for girls to know they excelled in something, there would be a spot for them in college where they weren’t second-class, I think has helped to make our society more equal in general,” the President said.

Coach Mac in action

Coach Mac in action

“I think the challenge is making sure that, in terms of implementation, schools continue to take Title IX seriously … and I think understanding that this is good, not just for a particular college, not just for the NCAA, [but that] it is good for our society; it will create stronger, more confident women.”

Remarkably back in the controversial years when Title IX was in its early infancy, when girls and ball games were non compatible entities, Papa Mac’s adamant belief in women’s right to participate in sports empowered all of his daughters.

Happy Dad’s Day Papa Mac and, oh yeah, thanks for the jump shot, too!

Girls’ Basketball Camps No Longer a Novelty

When I was growing up, I lamented the lack of opportunities for girls and would have loved to hone my skills at camp. The summer after my freshman year at Illinois State University, ISU, I complained to my friend, Sterling High School Coach Phil Smith.

“I found a camp for you to go to,” Phil said.

“They don’t have girls’ basketball camps in the area.”

“I know—it’s a boy’s camp. Lee Frederick’s One-on-One.”

The first day, Phil made sure the boys would let me participate. I lined up behind the guys who were a head-and-shoulder taller and 40 pounds heavier than I. I learned how to spin, dribble behind my back and between my legs. I developed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar‘s sky-hook. The boys beat me every match up in the one-on-one, but I never gave up. At the end of the week, the guys took home their medals and trophies; I left with bruises and a bunch of new moves.

“Girl, whatcha been doin’?” Charlotte Lewis, our six-foot-three, one-hundred-eighty-pound, All-American Olympian center, said that next season. “I can’t stop ya no more.”

The day I beat Charlotte one-on-one, I knew I’d earned my starting position.

Phil, ahead of his time, suggested we start our own local camp. McKinzie-Smith Girls Basketball Camp was born and ran for a decade. The first year, we handed out t-shirts with the words BASKET printed above an image of ball and awarded a trophies of male figurines shooting hoops. No one minded; girls were too happy to be having their own court time. Then we became more sophisticated, developing a better t-shirt design. With Phil’s business sense and coaching knowledge, our camp grew successful. In later years, we called it Lead Up Camp focusing on developing individual skills much like they do in camps now.

Today I am astounded at the smorgasbord of choices available to girls from team camps to offensive skills camps, to specialized position camps, as well as elite camps and AAU camps and dozens of others. A few examples: Little Dribbler Camp (pre K to 3rd grade) Hittin’ The Hardwood Exclusive Basketball Camp (3rd through 8th grade) Breakthrough Skill Development Basketball Camp  

Even with all the options available, I would still recommend attending my alma mater, Illinois State University, where girls’ camps have been held since the mid ‘70s. Stephanie Glance, Coach of the Year Missouri Valley Conference, and Jamie Russell (Rock Falls star and transfer from Wisconsin) who became the All Valley First Team Newcomer of the Year, are sure to offer valuable tips.

My other top choice, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point camps run by the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference’s most decorated coach, Shirley Egner.

Happy Birthday Title IX

Forty years ago, in the face of resistance and controversy, Title IX of the Education Amendments banned sex discrimination in schools. Some argue that it impacted women’s life more than the right to vote.

“No person in the U.S. shall, on the basis of sex be excluded from participation in, or denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal aid.”   June 23, 1972

That bill mandated equal opportunities in education without mentioning the word sport, yet athletics may be where it had the greatest influence. Since then high school female participation in competitive sports has increased by 900% and in college by 450%.

Stay tuned,  join me  Saturday for the 40th anniversary celebration of Title IX !

Beatenberg: Alp’s Best – Eiger, Mönch, Jungfrau Mountains

With summer right around the corner, everyone drags maps out of drawers and laments the rising gas prices. America is a spacious land with spectacular sights found nowhere else in the world, but it takes so darn long to get there.

In my “petite” country, grand vistas awaits, literally, right around the next corner. After a mere two hour drive, we are in the German speaking, Bernese Oberland, with lush green valleys speckled with amber and gold flowers and imposing, stark, white mountain peeks.

 

Switzerland is well known for out of the way, picturesque mountain villages that look postcard perfect. Beatenberg, at 1,200-meter altitude, offering a ringside view of Bernese Alps, is one of these.

a view to remember

a view to remember

 

Lined with chalets and restored turn of the century hotels, the town clings to the steppe beneath the Niedhorn mountain and braves harsh winter winds; however, villagers are rewarded with an incredible spectacle – the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau. Weather « beaten » and forlorn, Beaten berg  (German for town) aptly reflects it name.

 

the Eiger North Wall in the evening clouds

the Eiger North Wall in the evening clouds

 

It lurches on the cliff’s edge above Lake Thun. From our hotel window, we admire the matchbox cars winding around the mountainside and toy sailboats floating on the blue-green lake below. Red-roofed villages line the lake surrounded by evergreen forests, then steep chalky cliffs. At the uppermost level, the snow-covered peaks of the “three kings” reigned majestically.

Popular in 1900s during the Belle Époque, Beatenberg’s hotels once catered to aristocrats. Today, the village of just over a thousand inhabitants is no longer considered chic and trendy; however, it appeals to nature lovers, hikers, bikers and families wanting to get away from it all.

We strolled down the single road into and out of town. Sheep grazed in the meadows alongside a mountain stream. The local bus, a few cars and a half a dozen bikers whizzed past; otherwise, it was is so quiet, we could hear crickets chirp, sheep bleat and cow bells tingle, as if we had stepped into another time period.

quiet chalet in Beatenberg

quiet chalet in Beatenberg

In the morning, I flung open our window shutters but yesterday’s stunning view disappeared in puff of smoke like a figment of my imagination. Clouds rolled in overnight burying Lake Thun and hiding the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau, cloaking the village in a fog so dense that even the wooden clock tower steeple of the church across the street became invisible.

Yet surprisingly, on the last leg of our drive home, glimpses of the Alps reappeared as the sun broke through the clouds over Lake Geneva. In our little country, the climate like the topography changes in the blink of an eye.

Just so you won’t think life here is perfect, gas costs just under $8 a gallon and simple dinner for two without drinks is over a hundred bucks. Ah yes, paradise comes with a price.

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